I started lurking around here recently after a hiatus inspired by what I perceived as ungratefulness on the part of the people asking questions. It's pretty rare that anyone replies with a "thanks" or even bothers to click "yes" on Is this item helpful? . I often see questions posted again after the responses didn't match whatever expectations the poster originally had, only to see more of the same answers. One of the problems with common courtesy is that its adjective is not necessarily true. Does anyone have any ideas about what might be done to the jGuru framework to encourage people to be courteous, or at least to get a sense of what sort of thing doesn't irritate peope? I had a couple thoughts: You can't hav
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I started lurking around here recently after a hiatus inspired by what I perceived as ungratefulness on the part of the people asking questions. It's pretty rare that anyone replies with a "thanks" or even bothers to click "yes" on
Is this item helpful?
. I often see questions posted again after the responses didn't match whatever expectations the poster originally had, only to see more of the same answers.

One of the problems with common courtesy is that its adjective is not necessarily true.

Does anyone have any ideas about what might be done to the jGuru framework to encourage people to be courteous, or at least to get a sense of what sort of thing doesn't irritate peope? I had a couple thoughts:

You can't have more than one thread open at a time. Threads could be closed by indicating that some answer was helpful, or that the question is insufficient. For people that answer questions, it would be good to be able to browse for
open
threads. A perk of premium membership could be to have multiple open threads.

You have to have a membership for a week, and have viewed some number of FAQ entries before posting a question.

I know these don't make the site as usefull for people who need to ask questions, but I think that driving away the people who tend to answer the questions would degrade the service even more. I'm just trying to inspire some discussion here.

Do you really need to be told how wonderful you every time you help someone? Yes, it is a common courtesy to thank someone for help but there are a couple of peripheral issues here. Firstly, posting a thank you note adds to network / site traffic which may not be a good thing (especially as I get enough emails as it is without additional ones). Secondly, if everybody followed your lead and stopped answering questions because the original poster didn't have the manners to praise them then a site such as this would quickly close down.

It would be nice if people were house trained i.e. posted questions with useful subject lines, searched the FAQs first, thought about their questions before posting, first tried to solve the problem themselves etc.. In reality, there are always going to be people who are unable or unwilling to do any of these.